Southern Appalachian Creature Feature

White oak, ramps, dogwood. All these are plants important to the Cherokee tradition, and the Forest Service has teamed with the Cherokee to expand scientific and cultural understanding of these plants and more on the part of Cherokee students.

No animal seems to get people as excited as cougars.

Poaching isn’t just about the illegal harvest of elephant tusks and rhino horns – it can be a serious issue here in the southern Appalachians, impacting game animals, hurting the chances of recovering endangered species, and affecting our ability to continue harvesting traditional forest products like ginseng.

Many people have heard about white-nose syndrome, the fungal disease responsible for killing more than a million bats in the eastern United States that has left biologists, researchers, and land managers scrambling to halt its spread and reverse the damage done – an effort still very much under way, and far, far from completion.

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and the National Wild Turkey Federation are offering free turkey hunting seminars across North Carolina in March and April in anticipation of the spring turkey season

Researchers recently found a nuisance algae in Jackson County’s Tuckasegee River, prompting calls for anglers to be especially diligent when cleaning fishing equipment.

Power companies, the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and state and federal agencies have come together to conserve the sicklefin redhorse, a fish found in only six Appalachian counties worldwide and being considered for the federal endangered species list.

Tax time approaches, and in North Carolina this provides an easy opportunity to support wildlife conservation.

Over 50 years ago, Congress created the Land and Water Conservation Fund, a program that uses revenues from offshore oil and gas drilling in public waters to purchase land and easements for conservation and public recreation. The program has supported more than 42,000 national, state and local parks and outdoor recreation projects in all 50 states.

According to U.S. Forest Service researchers and their partners, between 2000 and 2012 the world lost 660,000 square miles of forest, an area more than twice the size of Texas.

All American eels hatch from eggs in the Sargasso Sea, an area of the Atlantic Ocean east of the Bahamas and south of Bermuda. From there, the young eels head west, swimming up streams from Canada to South America, where they spend most of their lives, returning to the ocean to reproduce and die.

Hemlock woolly adeglid, a tiny Asian insect, has killed hemlock trees across the southern Appalachians, opening up the forest canopy to additional sunlight.

Head outdoors and enjoy some of the country’s most magical places — America’s National Wildlife Refuges offer unparalleled opportunities to experience the great outdoors and see a rich diversity of wildlife in beautiful natural settings. If that wasn’t enticement enough, refuges that normally charge entrance fees will offer an additional incentive — free admission on certain days in 2016

In the United States, the vast majority of wildlife management is done by state wildlife agencies – the same folks who issue your hunting and fishing licenses. But there are some areas where the federal government steps in and takes a larger role. Ducks fly up and down North America each year, and they are avidly hunted. What if hunters in Virginia shot all the ducks before they could get to North Carolina? Migratory birds, including ducks, is an area where the federal government steps in and plays a key role.

A recent afternoon found staff from the Fish and Wildlife Service and Southern Highlands Reserve bushwhacking through Pisgah National Forest collecting red spruce cones - a first step in a multi-year process to restore red spruce to areas where it was found before the extensive logging and burning at the turn of the 20th century.

Absent for more than half a century, lake sturgeon returned to North Carolina waters this fall as seven-thousand fish were released into the French Broad River.

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, along with North Carolina State Parks, continue to stock trout into in Hanging Rock State Park’s lake, supporting the new Stokes County trout fishery created earlier this year.

Monitoring, or regularly going out and counting plants or animals following an established protocol, provides biologists with key information on the distribution of plants and animals and the well-being of individual populations.

Recognizing its incredible diversity of stream life and years of efforts to conserve that diversity, the Little Tennessee River basin has been designated the nation’s first Native Fish Conservation Area.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park invites all 4th-grade students to visit the park as part of the White House's new Every Kid in a Park program. The park offers a variety of activities that fourth graders and their family can enjoy, including guided discovery hikes, educational programs, self-guided junior ranger activities, and special events throughout the year.

The ridge we hiked along in Pisgah National Forest was open, dry, and on this day, hot. The area had recently experienced a fire and one of the benefits was the explosion of mountain golden heather, a threatened plant adapted to periodic fire.

Southern Appalachian Mountain bogs are one of the rarest habitats in the nation, and on my way to visit a North Georgia bog, our guides stopped to check a hog trap – designed to catch the hogs that were rooting in the bog, and damaging some of its rare plants.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials announced the closure of the Whiteoak Sink area effective now through March 31, 2016 to limit human disturbance to bat hibernation sites and help hikers avoid interactions with bats.

On a recent camping trip to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, it bore remembering that the park only allows outside firewood that is certified as being heated to the point that undesirable insects hitching a ride on the wood would be killed.

New research on the effects of warming temperatures and stream acidity projects average habitat losses of around 10 percent for coldwater aquatic species in southern Appalachian national forests – including up to a 20 percent loss of habitat in the Pisgah and Nantahala National Forests.

Whirling disease, a parasitic disease affecting trout and salmon, has been found in North Carolina.

Staff at the Asheville-based non-profit Monarch Rescue recently reported that monarch butterfly eggs and caterpillars were found at a pollinator garden they worked with students to install at Yancey County’s Mountain Heritage High School.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced 37.2 million dollars in grants to 20 states to support the conservation of threatened and endangered species across the nation, and a portion of that money is coming to the southern Appalachians.

Fresh off of discovering whirling disease for the first time in North Carolina, fisheries biologists with the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission recently confirmed gill lice on rainbow trout in three North Carolina streams.

The Blue Ridge Parkway, the National Park Service unit that stretches from Great Smoky Mountains National Park, along the Blue Ridge Mountains, to Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park, is hosting a bio-blitz in mid-September.

We’re in the heat of summer, and one thing is evident – river recreation is on the uptick this year. Why not add a new dimension to hitting the water?

North Carolina governor Pat McCrory recently signed into law the Outdoor Heritage Act.

Despite the elevation, it was quite hot, as the midday sun fell on the dry ridge running along Linville Gorge. We were there to monitor mountain golden heather, a threatened plant. Despite being a Wednesday, an off day for outdoor recreation, during three three or four hours we were in the sun counting plants, several people hiked by on the trail that bisected our work area.

The 2015-2016 Federal Duck Stamp was recently unveiled, and features a pair of ruddy ducks painted by wildlife artist Jennifer Miller of Olean, New York. Last fall, a panel of five judges chose Miller’s art from among 186 entries at the Federal Duck Stamp Art Contest. Miller is the third woman to win the Federal Duck Stamp Contest.

Bears have been in the news a lot recently, most notably related to a hiker who was pulled from his hammock by a bear in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. According to the Park Service’s report, the young man, and his father, who were travelling together, had properly stored their equipment, food, and packs on aerial food storage cables.

On the heels of numerous pollinator gardens being installed in western North Carolina, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency has announced a major effort to help save monarch butterflies.

I’ve often talked about southern Appalachian Mountain bogs, their rarity, and the rareness of many of the plants and animals found in them. There’s a bog south of Asheville that’s a bittersweet place. Despite development in its vicinity, it still hangs on, and in fact people in the community recognize its importance. What makes it a sad place is it used to be home to one of the best bog turtle populations in the southeast. Until those turtles were poached to feed an illegal pet trade.

On May fourth, the northern long-eared bat was added to the federal endangered species list as a threatened animal. What makes this listing especially notable, is it’s the first related to the fungal disease white-nose syndrome, which has killed millions of bats in eastern and central North America.

In the wake of dramatically declining populations, last year the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was asked to place the monarch butterfly on the endangered species list, beginning a process of reviewing data and scientific literature to determine if listing is warranted.

This past spring Mountain Bogs National Wildlife Refuge became America’s 563rd refuge.

The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and the National Wild Turkey Federation are offering free turkey hunting seminars in Henderson County’s Mills River community on April 1st and 2nd in anticipation of the upcoming spring turkey season.

The monarch is probably America’s best known butterfly, and the subject of extensive conservation efforts as it has experienced a dramatic decline in recent years, to the point the Fish and Wildlife Service has been asked to place it on the endangered species list.

While monarch butterflies are found across the United States — as recently as 1996 numbering some 1 billion — their numbers have declined by approximately 90 percent in recent years, a result of numerous threats.

The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are investigating the shooting of an bald eagle in east Tennessee. A reward of up to $10,000 is being offered for information leading to a conviction of the person or persons responsible for wounding the eagle.

It’s a cold day, with snow falling, as a group of biologists hikes across a southern Appalachian bog. Biologist Sue Cameron has found a hole in the ground that looks promising. Standing in the mud, she rolls up her sleeve, gets down on her knees, and sticks her hand in the hole, hoping to find a bog turtle. She comes up empty handed – but this trip wasn’t intended as a turtle search and the turtle happens to be one of the rarest in the United States.

As part of the ongoing effort to combat the hemlock woolly adelgid in the Southern Appalachians, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission recently released predator beetles into Buncombe County’s Sandy Mush Game Lands.

For the fourth time in 80 years, Great Smoky Mountains National Park had over ten million annual visitors in a single year. In 2014, 10,099,275 visitors visited the park, an 8% increase over 2013. The other years when visitation topped ten million were 1987, 1999, 2000.

I’ve previously spoke about a proposal by Great Smoky Mountains National Park to limit the spread of invasive insects into the park by limiting the type of firewood that could be brought into the park, and come March 2015, those news rules will go into effect.

Every seat in the conference room was filled, with more chairs brought in for the overflow. In the room were aquatic biologists, geneticists, fish propagation experts, dam management experts – a host of biologists offering what they knew about the sicklefin redhorse.

It’s a new year, full of promise and opportunity. It’s the annual clean slate, when we look ahead, full of thoughts about how to enrich our minds and bodies, and generally become better people

Nearly 6,000 acres of Pisgah National Forest’s Grandfather Ranger District were restored this past year, thanks to the help of numerous partners.